


Spiderling

by PitViperOfDoom



Series: Spin, Spider, Spin [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bullying, Children Acquired by Magic, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Spiders, Spinning wheels, Wishes, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitViperOfDoom/pseuds/PitViperOfDoom
Summary: “Should you choose the spider," says the witch to the desperate, hopeful couple, "they will give you the child you desire. But one day, they will want it back.”
Series: Spin, Spider, Spin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858633
Comments: 52
Kudos: 444





	Spiderling

**Author's Note:**

> So two weeks ago I saw [this comic](https://pitviperofdoom.tumblr.com/post/623664467597836288/thestalkerbunny-times-are-troubling-and-hard) on Tumblr and my entire brain went "JON SIMS AS A FAIRY TALE COTTAGE WITCH WHO HANDS OUT BOONS AND CURSES AND STUFF" and popped out another AU.
> 
> Jon's not quite a witch in this story, though, that'll come later.

It begins, as these things often do, with a childless couple.

It is not for lack of love or desire. They love each other the way only those who make an effort truly can. They tame and nurture it like a finicky garden, sharing the fruits of their labor until there is room left to nurture something else. But, try as they might, they cannot bring a child into the world alone. And so, with all other options exhausted, they turn, as childless couples often do, to other methods.

There is a witch in the woods. Her temper is short, but no shorter than it ought to be. She has no patience for questions of good and wickedness, and prefers to be left alone. When the wind is right and the cause is worth her time, she will help.

And so, they seek her out.

They bring a basket of fresh vegetables from the garden and jars of jam and preserves, all tied up with twine spun by the prospective mother’s own hand. After all, regardless of the wind’s rightness, it is polite to pay people for their time.

The witch admits them, inspects their payment, and listens to their plight. “I can give you the child you desire,” she says. “The years you share may even be happy ones, if you like. But one day, your child will be lost to you.”

"Lost?" the mother whispers.

“All children must leave their parents eventually,” the father-to-be says.

The witch nods thoughtfully, then rises from her table and vanishes into the other room. When she returns, she holds a black box in her wrinkled hands. Opening it reveals nothing; shadows pool within, hiding its contents. It may as well be a deep well, not a box.

“Reach inside,” the witch tells them.

She watches their faces as they consider it. They are hopeful with a tinge of desperation, but they are not fools. A witch, good or wicked or otherwise, is not to be dealt with carelessly.

“What will happen if I reach inside?” the mother-to-be asks.

“You will have your child,” the witch replies.

Her husband’s hand hovers over the box. The shadows reach for it, like vines grasping for a branch. His hand withdraws.

“Is there another way?” he asks politely.

The witch grunts, rises again. This time, instead of vanishing, she goes further into the kitchen where the window lets in the light, then reaches into the corner of it and returns with a slender, delicate spider in the palm of her hand. She places it beside the box, and instead of scuttling away, it sits still and waits.

“If you do not want the child the darkness gives you,” she says. “Then take this spider and give it a corner of your home. Do not disturb it as it spins, and you will have your child.”

It is not a choice to be made lightly. “You said the child will be lost,” the mother says. “How will we lost them?”

The witch shuts her eyes, thinks for a moment, and replies. “Should you choose the dark, your child will hold a yawning void within. If they cannot fill it, then it will one day swallow them, and you will never see them again.”

At her words, the couple shrinks back from the box. The empty space sits heavy in their hearts, but to fill it is not worth a child’s suffering.

With another nod, the witch continues. “Should you choose the spider, they will give you the child you desire. But one day, they will want it back.”

It is a difficult choice. An impossible one, perhaps. But… “All children leave their parents,” the father repeats softly. “If they want to return, then they shall.”

When they leave the witch’s house, the spider sits cupped in the mother’s gentle hands.

They set it loose in a corner of their home, closest to the window with the gap that lets in the flies. It spins and spins, until by nightfall the corner is enmeshed in web.

A day passes, then two, then three, then a week. The corner is white with webbing so thick that they cannot see the wall and floor beneath. There are no more flies.

On the eighth day, their patience is rewarded. The web is as thick as bedding, and sure enough, nestled in the corner and swaddled in white silk, their infant child sleeps soundly. He wakes at their touch, and as they lift him out of the web, the threads fall away and he begins to cry.

(They feed him milk, not flies, and his hunger is satisfied.)

They love him, as promised, though he is every inch a spider’s child. Even as he grows, he remains small for his age, with thin bones and long, delicate fingers. His eyes are spider’s eyes, deepest black and jewel-bright. His hair is like rough-spun silk, as dark as ink except where it grows in pale cobweb-gray. There is no venom in his teeth, only the sharpened length of two vestigial fangs.

He is a quiet child, until he decides not to be. He is stone-still and watchful, until he decides to wander. He is curious and generous, and his spider’s eyes shine like jet when he finds something new to share. They shine when he learns to read, when he discovers a new quiet place to hide with a book, when his father stops to bend an ear and listen to his chatter, when he finds his mother spinning, when she guides his thin hands through teasing and twisting the fibres into thread.

He is whip-sharp and full of strangeness. He is the child that they desired. He is loved.

And then, one day, he is alone.

It is no one’s fault, truly. There is no malice behind their deaths, only the turning of fortune. A bad fall. An illness. Many terrible things in the world happen to people who have done nothing to deserve them.

As quickly as happiness came upon them, it is gone, and the spider’s child is left among humans who did not ask for him.

* * *

His parents’ belongings are sold or distributed among their relations. They pass him from one to the next, never keeping him for long. His spider’s eyes pierce them like needles. His watchful stillness unsettles them. His wandering causes trouble, but not worry. He screams in fits when he finds another of his parents’ precious things gone, sold away or given to someone who had more use for them than the dead. He bites the hand that reaches for his mother’s spinning wheel, and is rewarded when they wait until he falls asleep before removing it and handing it off to the woman down the lane. He weeps with quiet rage when he finds it gone, and the quiet means his tears can be ignored.

The spinner is kind, at least. He sees her fear in her trembling hands, in the way she never meets his eyes. But she lets him visit, and touch the wheel, and watch her spin. She leaves tea and sweets within his reach. She does not sing as she works, and her shaking hands leave lumps in the yarn, but she lets him stay, all the same. His hands itch to spin again, but she never invites him to try. She will not guide his hands through spinning, because that would mean touching him.

The last time someone touched him was when he bit the hand that stole his mother’s spinning wheel. Word travels fast in little towns.

Other children still touch him, even if their parents never do. They push him if he gets too close, shoves becoming cuffs and blows if he is too slow to leave. The bolder ones put their fingers in his hair, curious to see if the gray streaks feel the same as the rest of the black. Rumors whisper that they do not, that the skinny orphan with strange eyes and sharp teeth has spiderwebs growing from his head.

He is sitting beneath a tree, reading a book, when it happens. One of the older boys creeps up on him from the side, hands poised and reaching. The spider’s child recognizes him, though he does not know his name. He only knows that the bully is old enough to bristle at being called a child, and much too big and tall to fight off or run from. Whether he wants to snatch the book from his hands or yank a fistful of gray and black hairs from his head is anyone’s guess.

In the end, the spider’s child never finds out. He ducks away from the cruel grasping fingers, and without warning the older boy lets out a scream. Prickling legs skitter up the side of the child’s neck and into his hair. Something dark and quick runs down his face and drops onto the book in his lap.

It is, of course, a spider. And there are many more where it came from.

An understanding is reached, after that. Children who bully him find spiders in their hair, in their clothes, in their beds. Even when there are no spiders to find, the feeling of phantom legs on arms and necks and faces never quite goes away.

Soon enough, the other children refuse to go near him. Soon enough, the only touch he receives is from the spiders that skitter across his hands from time to time, on legs as long and spindly as his fingers. Sometimes he talks to them, because there is no one else to talk to.

Sometimes, they talk back.

 _Further, further,_ a spider whispers into his ear. He is not quite running, because running makes his footsteps loud and he does not want his aunt to hear him. His aunt is no squeamish child, and spiders in his hair will not stop her from grabbing his ear and twisting. And so, this spider sits on his shoulder as he slips from the house and wanders out into town with a book tucked under his arm.

He only wants to read. He is quiet when he reads, and his caretakers leave him be when he is quiet. But they left him with so few books from his parents, after selling and giving away the rest. He has read all the books that they let him keep, and it would drive him mad to read them again and again, with nothing new. But they hate when he touches things that are not his. Stealing is wrong, he knows—he hates to be stolen from. But they have so much, and he won’t even keep it, just read it once and give it back—

It does not matter.

 _Around the corner,_ the spider whispers. He turns. _Under the hole in the fence_ . He ducks down, crawls. _There, the shed. It is dark, and quiet, with holes in the roof to let in the light._

And it is. The shadows hide him, but there is enough light to let him read. He wishes his mother’s spinning wheel was as easy to carry as a book. He misses the gentle rattle and hum of the wheel, the feel of wool and flax twisting between his fingers, his mother’s soft singing as she guides his hands. But she is gone now, and the wheel sits in a stranger’s house with a woman who is too afraid to ask his name, much less touch him.

It has been so long since he made thread, but he has nothing to spin, and the spinner will not let him touch her wool. So he reads, because joy is out of reach but at least this brings him calm.

The old shed is a safe place. The spider’s child has many of them, but the shed is safest. It is the one place no one will follow him.

* * *

There is a girl in town.

The spider’s child does not know her. He only knows that she is here now because he makes a point of always knowing where the other children are. It is safer to know where they are. They bully him less only because they are afraid of him now, and fear makes them more cruel, not less. There are ways to hurt him without touching him, and some have grown used to finding spiders in their bedsheets.

But this girl is new, and always alone when he sees her. He does not know where she lives or who she came with. He never sees her speak to anyone. The other children give her a wider berth than they give him, but they are not cruel. They simply part around her, like water around a river stone. She walks between them, not among them.

He watches her because he does not know her, because he is curious, and because he is afraid.

And then one day she watches back, and he sees her eyes for the first time—deepest black and jewel-bright.

Spider’s eyes.

The day after she meets his gaze, he steals a book while his uncle’s back is turned and carries it to his shed. His skinned knees have stopped bleeding, but the bruises still smart. The older boy—Thomas, he knows that now—lost his temper and shoved him aside today, and he lost his balance and fell on the cracked paving stones. It’s his own fault; spiders make his uncle tremble and turn pale, so of course he blamed Thomas for the missing book rather than risk laying a hand on the spider’s child.

He ducks and crawls gingerly under the broken fence, wincing over his stinging knees. The quiet darkness of the shed calls to him, and he creeps inside to the patch of light he reads by.

Spider’s eyes glint at him in the dark.

“Hello,” the girl says. “Is this place yours?”

He goes still and silent.

It _is_ his place. This is his shed, his hiding-place, his sanctuary from the rest of the town. And now it has been invaded, and he does not know what to do.

The girl glances around the cramped, cluttered space, carefree and heedless to his discomfort. “This place is pretty miserable,” she remarks, almost cheerfully. “All abandoned and dirty. Nothing in here but forgotten things, unwanted things, and spiders.” Her smile flashes fangs at him. “Guess you fit right in, don’t you?”

“Go away.” It is hardly his fault that his voice cracks and squeaks. He has so little practice using it.

“No, you’re right,” she says. “You’re not forgotten. Mother never forgets one of her children.”

“I don’t want you here.”

She smiles again, scoots over and pats the spot next to her. “She didn’t forget me, and she didn’t forget you. That makes me your sister.”

“I don’t have a sister,” he says, but he sits down next to her anyway.

She pouts at him. “That hurts my feelings.”

“My parents didn’t have anyone but me.” He wishes they did, sometimes. It would be nice, not being alone. But wishing for someone else like him means wishing for someone else to hurt like he does, and he does not want that either.

“Oh, _them_.” She tosses her head. Her hair glints in the shaft of light—pale gray-on-white all over, rather than streaks like his. “You aren’t theirs. They just borrowed you. But don’t worry—Mother will want you back soon.”

“No she won’t.” It slips out before he can stop it. “No one does.”

Her smile turns pitying. “That’s what I thought, too. But she will, one day. She misses you. She didn't even get to _name_ you. So she’ll want you back, just like she wanted me.”

He’s not sure he likes that. Something tells him that whoever Mother is, she will want him to call her the same.

He already has a mother. Sometimes, when he sees a spool of thread in a shop window or touches the spinning wheel or smells the right kind of tea, he hears her voice. He remembers the tune she liked to hum, the feel of her hands on his, rough and callused from sewing needles and spindles.

But for now he sits next to the girl who calls herself his sister, surrounded by dust and detritus and spiders. When she puts her arm around him, he lets her, and it is the first gentle hand he has felt since his parents died.

She reaches around and tugs on his hair, but it does not hurt. She only pulls at the pale streaks, the ones that come out easily and grow back quickly.

“You don’t have a lot,” she remarks, twirling them between her thin fingers. “Not as much as me. Still nice, though.”

He watches the silvery strands as they spin this way and that, and an idea forms in his head.

* * *

He slips in while the spinner is asleep.

The treadle still feels the same beneath the press of his foot. Dust motes drift from the wheel as it turns. The worn wood creaks and rattles. Thread—silver-white, translucent, gossamer—winds around the bobbin. It is not like wool or flax. It is not like anything his mother ever teased into yarn and thread.

But it spins.

He hums his mother’s melody, and feels calm.

* * *

Her name is Annabelle.

He knows that she is what she says she is—if the eyes and the cobweb-silk hair did not convince him—because she was not the one to tell him her name. The spiders were.

The children avoid her the way they’ve never properly avoided the first spider’s child to come into their midst. They merely shun him, and throw pebbles and insults from a safe distance, but they leave _her_ properly alone.

There is a part of him that envies her, and another part that thinks she must be even lonelier than he is. Their fear makes her stand taller, while it has only ever bent him double beneath its weight. He finds himself wondering about the parents who wished for her. Maybe they weren’t kind the way his were. Maybe she’s proud of being alone because she doesn’t know that people can be better than this.

She finds him hiding one day—not in the shed, but in the dark corner of a barn where there’s a gap in the stacked hay bales. He was running from his usual tormentor, and asked the spider spinning its web in the gap for permission to hide by its home.

“You could ask for more than this, you know,” Annabelle tells him, with a pitying look. “They can help you do more than just crawl away and hide.” She flashes her fangs. “They can _make_ them stop.”

“I don’t want to fight anyone,” he says sullenly, picking bits of hay out of his hair. “Fighting hurts.”

“How do you know?” she asks. “You’ve never fought before.”

He has. Not much and not well, but he has. He bit his uncle’s hand for trying to take the spinning wheel away, and it made people stop touching him, for the most part. Before the spiders came, he tried a few times to hit back when the other children roughed him up, and it only got him beaten worse. Fighting just seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

He tells Annabelle as much, and she rolls her eyes at him. “You’re not supposed to fight _fair_ ,” she says, sitting on the edge of a bale and swinging her legs. “You’re just supposed to teach them what happens when they don’t stay away.”

He thinks about this silently, curled up in the cramped safety between the hay bales. “What happens?” he asks after a while.

Annabelle smiles. “That would spoil the surprise. Why don’t you see for yourself?”

He puts it out of his mind, because he does not need to see for himself. He is doing fine just as he is. He visits the spinner to watch her work at his mother’s wheel. He bites his tongue and keeps out of the way of whatever relative of his parents is putting him up. If the other children cause him trouble, then he hides until they get bored. If he can’t avoid trouble with the adults, then he slips away until their anger passes.

It is enough—until it is not.

It is Thomas again. The spider’s child would love to avoid him, but he does small jobs for his relatives, and that puts the child in his path more often than either of them would like. He tries to stay quiet and out of the way, but his tongue is sharper than his teeth at times, and he can’t help but get underfoot when Thomas is always there.

Today the older boy—nearly a man now—is running deliveries, a task that brings him back again and again. Each time they cross paths, something between them is wound tighter and tighter until it screams from the strain.

And then the child darts across his path—not on purpose, only to scurry out of the way—and Thomas trips, and the load spills. Something breaks. The child escapes outside, as quick and silent as ever, leaving Thomas to whatever blistering scolding awaits him for his clumsiness.

It is not a fast chase that follows. It is not the heart-pounding terror of running through the streets with footsteps thundering behind him. It is a quiet, desperate thing that starts and stops, as the child flits from one hiding place to another, and each one is found.

He is nearly to the shed when he is finally caught.

The street is hard against his back, the blood is warm as it runs down his face, and Thomas’s dark scowl and bared teeth seem very high up. He does not remember Thomas being this big, the first time he chased him down and threw him to the paving stones. It makes him feel small and fragile, as if Thomas could lift one foot and crush him to nothing beneath his boot.

The look on Thomas’s face tells him that he just might.

He can’t run away, not with Thomas already on top of him. He certainly can’t hide, no matter how clever the spiders are or how quick he is.

He just wants it to stop.

He just wanted it to _stop_.

So he asks.

At first, nothing happens. The first kick comes, and he thinks, of _course_ nothing happens. What can small, fragile spiders do against Thomas?

The answer comes in the creaking of the shed door. It is not very loud, but even Thomas must hear it, because he stops and puts his foot down, and looks at the shed door that was closed before but now drifts ajar as if pushed by the wind.

There is no wind today.

Thomas’s face is frozen as he watches the door. He rounds on the child cowering at his feet. “What’s in there?” he demands. “What are you hiding, you little sneak?”

There is nothing in there. Nothing but dust and cobwebs, forgotten things and unwanted things and spiders.

Thomas moves closer to the door, one step at a time, and it drifts further open as if beckoning to him. He reaches out, takes hold of it in one hand—

(The child blinks, and almost sees the razor thin threads wrapped around his wrist.)

—and pulls it open.

Has the shed ever been so dark on the inside? It can’t be that dark, not with the gaps in the roof that let in the light. But there is no light now, and even so—even so, the shadows _shift_.

There is nothing inside but dust and detritus and spiders. That has always been true, and it is true now.

The first leg extends, long and thin, jointed and boneless. Then a second, and a third, and a fourth, curving around Thomas where he stands frozen in the open doorway.

He pulls his hand back sharply, turns to run, and the legs catch him fast. He has no time to scream before he is dragged back into the dark, and the door swings shut again.

The child sits on the blood-flecked stones, one hand outstretched as if to catch him.

Behind him, Annabelle giggles. “I _told_ you. You could’ve done that ages ago, if you’d just asked.” She crouches behind him. “Now he can’t hurt you ever again.”

When he runs away this time, he does not ask the spiders to show him the way. He never will again.

* * *

There are whispers in the town of a witch deep in the forest. A hovel-dwelling crone, gnarled and bent like an old tree. They say she will help you if you ask, but not for free.

The spider’s child knows that the whispers are true, because if they weren’t, he would not be here.

And so he runs through the forest with a spool of thread clutched in his hands. The thread is neither wool nor flax. It is uneven, full of lumps, spun with small hands made clumsy from far too little practice. But it is all that he has left to give.

He finds the hovel without the spiders’ help (he will never ask them for help again) and it is not a hovel at all but a small cottage, the roof neatly thatched, with an herb garden stuffed into the window boxes.

The woman who answers the door is certainly old, but far less knobby and twisted than the rumors would have one believe. She frowns down at him, her face pinched with irritation as she takes in the lumpy thread in his hands, the poor state of his clothes, the bruises on his arms, the dried blood crusted on his face.

“Oh for _heaven’s sake_ ,” she snaps, and the child flinches back. But instead of sending him away, the witch grasps his wrist in her dry, wrinkled hand and pulls him inside.

She is angry as she works, cleaning his face and smearing stinging ointment on his scratches. Of course she is angry, with this forgotten, unwanted thing invading her home and tracking filth on her floor. She takes the thread he offers, unwinds it far enough to see the lumps, and sighs a little when he avoids her eyes.

(He knows better than to meet anyone’s eyes, no one likes looking at his eyes—)

Eventually she finishes, and she does not send him away. He lingers, and it is maddening to bite tongue and stay still when there is so much around him to see, to discover, to learn. He has never been in a witch’s cottage before, and the questions build in the back of his throat until they threaten to choke him.

He cannot sit still. He wanders the cottage, looking at things, touching them cautiously. Once or twice he reaches for something fragile-looking and gets his hand swatted for his trouble. But it is not a real blow, not like the cuffs from his aunts and uncles, not like pebbles from the children, not like kicks from—

From—

The spider’s child rubs his eyes. When they are clear again, he can see the witch inspecting his thread, running her fingers over the uneven twist. He looks away, embarrassed.

“Don’t pout,” she says. “You need practice.”

He thinks of his mother’s spinning wheel, sitting in a stranger’s home. His chest aches with longing.

Soon, the sun begins to dip down into the trees.

“I don’t suppose you’re planning on going home,” the witch sighs.

He does not answer.

“Probably for the best,” she snorts, full of disdain that makes him flinch. “One more day of that and that town would be overrun.” She _tsk_ s, irritated. “Some people. Can’t just smile and nod and accept a gift when it’s given.”

He does not go home that night. The next morning, he will awaken to find his few belongings stacked around him—patched clothes, a few books that he has already read, and nothing else.

The witch is… kind. She must be, to allow him to stay in her home for nothing but a roll of bad thread. She scolds but does not scream, she swats his hands away from some of her things, but there is consistency there that his aunts and uncles and cousins lacked. There are things that he is allowed to touch and things that he is not, and they do not change depending on the time of day or the witch’s mood. She even answers one cautious question from him, and that is enough to shatter the dam within him keeping the rest of his curiosity back.

She grouses about things—he is nosy, he does not sit still, he talks too much and asks too many questions. But she lets him stay, and he is calmer here then he ever was at home.

It feels less and less like home, the more time he spends away. If it were home, someone would come looking for him. But no one does.

They are happy that he is gone. Why wouldn’t they be, after what happened to Thomas? They would be mad to want him back.

But the witch… the witch does not want him either, he thinks. She did not ask for him, only helped the ones who did. But he is here now, and she lets him stay and answers his questions until she tires of it, and he accepts that he cannot ask for more.

One morning he wakes up to a spinning wheel that was not there before. It is not his mother’s. It is old and dusty and has not been touched in ages. The wood feels different beneath his fingers, the treadle is heavier to press, and the rattle and creak are a different pitch. But his fingers itch to spin, and the witch does not swat his hands away from this.

“The spiders will want you back one day,” she says simply. “I can hardly send them a child who can’t spin.”

A leaden pit sits heavy in his stomach. He still thinks of Annabelle often—she is the closest he has ever had to a friend—but he tries not to think of her words, of her fanged smile as she talks about Mother.

He does not want to think about Annabelle’s Mother. Why should she care about how he spins? It was his own mother who taught him, not her.

* * *

Two months and his ninth birthday pass before she comes.

He is reading to give his sore fingers a rest. The witch has many books, and unlike his aunts and uncles she does not mind if he reads them. Those that she does not want him reading, she simply hides or places out of reach. The books are also different from what he is used to—not storybooks or books about plants. The witch’s books are written in strange handwriting, and the things they say about plants are much different from the almanacs and botany books he has seen before.

He turns a page, and feels the familiar tickle of legs up the back of his neck.

Before, he barely noticed the feeling, and if he did, it was a comforting one. Now it brings the memory of long, spindly legs reaching through the door of the shed to drag Thomas inside, and the fear in the pit of his stomach grows teeth. He thrashes, flings the spider away, and runs to his bed.

Soon, there is a knock at the door.

He does not answer the door. This is not his house and that is not his door to answer. But he does edge around for a better view, so that he can see who has come to visit when the witch opens it.

He sees Annabelle. She is barefoot, and her dress is pale yellow and pretty. He knows that she sews her own clothes, that she has silk aplenty to make as many as she likes.

There are spiders sitting in her pale hair. They are also at her feet, and on her shoulders. There is one peeking up out of a pocket sewn over her chest, long spindly legs tucked over the linen.

(He thinks of legs longer than that, curving out of the dark, snatching Thomas into the shadows before he could even scream)

When he comes back to where he is, the witch is looking at him. "Well," she says brusquely. "It's time."

"Mother wants you back," Annabelle tells him. "They sent me to get you, now come on!"

He stays where he is.

The witch looks impatient. "Well?"

" _I don't want to—_ "

"Speak up now," the witch snaps. "Heaven knows you've had no trouble talking since you came here."

"I don't want to," he says again, louder this time.

Annabelle scowls. "What do you mean you don't want to?" she demands. "Come on already. It's time to go home."

"I—" He almost says _I am home,_ but that is not really true. He has not been home since his parents died, and the witch will not like him claiming hers.

But he does not know where the spiders are going to take him, and that means it is farther from home than he has ever been before.

He may not have a right to call the witch's house his home, but Annabelle has no right to tell him where his home is, either.

"That's not home," he says. "And I don't want to go."

Annabelle wrinkles her nose. "So you'd rather do what? Stay here, where they hate you? Mother wants you back."

"I already have a mother." His voice trembles. "And a father. They wanted me."

"They're dead now," Annabelle snaps.

His long fingers curl into fists. "Go away. I'm not going with you."

"Yes you are!" Annabelle stamps her foot. "We want you back!"

"If they really wanted me," he says, "they would have taken me sooner." Maybe if they had, Thomas would still be alive, instead of dragged into the dark and eaten.

"There's nothing for you here," Annabelle says, scowling at him. "Nothing but ugly, hateful people who ignore you or hurt you. What have they ever done for you?"

He thinks of his parents. Of his father bending an ear when he talked, of his mother singing to him as they spun. He thinks of the spinner woman who takes good care of his mother's wheel, who was so very afraid but still kind to him when he came to her. He thinks of the witch by the door, who lets him stay and gives him things to read and her own wheel to spin with.

The spiders left him with people who hated him, and when he asked for help they just killed someone instead.

"You have to come," Annabelle tells him angrily. "Mother says so. Mother says you’re _hers_. You have to come home so she can give you a name."

Words sit heavy on his tongue—and words have never felt like that before. Saying them aloud is almost a relief, a heavy weight lifted.

"My _real_ mother named me Jonathan.”

The spiders go still. From the doorway comes a soft sigh, followed by a dry chuckle.

“Sorry, dear,” the witch says to Annabelle. “I’m afraid you have your answer.”

“What answer?” Annabelle demands. “We want him back. He has to come back.”

“He’s made his choice,” says the witch. “And it isn’t you. And now, I’m afraid you must be going. All of you. Go on—off with you.”

“You can’t keep him forever!” Annabelle raises her voice. “He’s ours, and we’re taking him back! You can’t have him!”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” the witch says, and shuts the door in her face.

Jonathan expects Annabelle to knock again, or to keep shouting. But it is silent outside, until he finally hears her footsteps fade.

The witch rounds on him. “That means you, too. Out.” He freezes where he stands, dread twisting in knots inside him, until the witch brushes past him and scoops the spider off the wall. She carries it to the window, opens it a crack, and shoos it out.

And then all is quiet.

Slowly, the witch heaves a deep sigh. “Now. What to do with you?”

“Are you going to send me back?” he asks.

“What? Back there? Heavens no.” Disdain sharpens the witch’s face into a frown. “Your parents did well enough with you, but their relations clearly have no idea how to behave. And the spiders would be back for you in the blink of an eye. No, no, there’s nothing for it, I suppose.” She checks the latch on her front door, then wanders into the kitchen to neaten up.

Jonathan follows her. “They’ll be back here too, won’t they?” he asks. “Annabelle said you can’t keep me here forever. Was that true?”

“Of course it’s true,” the witch replies, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You can’t keep anyone or anything in one place forever, much less a wish child.” She meets his gaze sharply. “Mind you, if you make enough mischief, I might just lock you in for a moment’s peace.”

He believes her.

“But the spiders’ girl was right about one thing,” the witch goes on, turning back to her appointed task. “I can’t protect you from them forever. So I’ll have to settle for something better.”

She takes a heavy book down from a shelf. Until today she has kept out of his reach, even though it is merely a simple cookbook. Then she blows dust from the cover, and it changes. When Jonathan looks at it, the simple illustration of a cooking-pot is gone, and he can no longer read the title.

“You like to read, don’t you?” she asks. “And you like to learn. You certainly ask enough questions.”

Jonathan stares at the cover. For the first time since his parents died, his spider’s eyes are jewel-bright. “Are you going to teach me how to be a witch like you?”

“I’m going to teach you to protect yourself,” she replies. “We’ll see if there’s a witch in you to become.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you IceEckos12 for being a wonderful beta!


End file.
